Academic medical faculty, who devote their lives to improving human health, are often frequent travelers. Given the significant contribution of transportation and travel activities to local and global environmental degradation, faculty must grapple with the impact of their work on patients and the public. During the COVID-19 pandemic, academicians were forced to develop innovative communication and business strategies, which also spawned new perspectives on the role of travel in academic life. We sought to learn more about these adaptations and perspectives, and to consider whether insights gained might inform a more deliberate and conscientious culture of academic travel.

We conducted faculty focus groups with participants from different academic levels and four different health graduate programs at an academic medical center, and inquired about motivations for and perspectives on past, present and future travel practices.

Faculty provided extensive observations about their travel histories and how, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were responding to abrupt challenges to their personal and professional responsibilities. They addressed the cognitive dissonance generated by flying frequently during a time of global warming, and they offered multiple recommendations for changes to the status quo.

Building on the rich qualitative data gathered during our focus groups, we propose a unique framework for academicians to advance the culture of travel in the 21st century. This framework proposes specific steps to mitigate planetary degradation and its associated inequities, and it suggests creative mechanisms for simultaneously enhancing the personal and professional quality of faculty life.